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Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, jump to The Week Ahead.
Courting rituals: It never figured to be a US v. Microsoft sort of brawl, and then it was over before it began. The Federal Trade Commission and Intel started the week by settling their antitrust dispute, just a day before they were to go to trial.
Noting that Intel's industry dominance eroded somewhat this past year, the FTC apparently saw its monopoly case slipping away. But a footnote: Regulators haven't called off all the Intel-sniffing hounds yet.
As for that more contentious antitrust case, a continuing hiatus slowed the news to two measly morsels. The Justice Department scoffed at settlement-talk rumors, and someone in Redmond leaked a memo that blamed Microsoft's woes on the press. Surprise.
Feeling insecure: The Pentium III brought Intel further grief this week. A Canadian security firm said it had developed an ActiveX program that could bypass Intel's patch and grab the processor's serial number. Just one more reason to ditch the number, privacy types said.
Intel partner Microsoft found itself in similar hot water. First there were questions about unique identifiers found in Microsoft Office documents. Then came accusations that the company was transferring Windows registration info to its Web site, Microsoft.com. Microsoft finally admitted that, yes, it was sharing information with the site and would in fact change its data-collection policies.
Politician, hype thyself: Sure, Al Gore was hip to the Net before most politicians, even if he did see it in government-centric terms. But the veep who would be prez got a bit carried away with himself this week, saying he "took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Squeaky-clean: "Rhymes with puck and starts with an F," said a CompUSA spokeswoman. That word, among others, in In Formation got the new tech-satire magazine pulled from store shelves.
Big deals: These are the MP3 boom days, with venture capitalists opening their wallets for "even the twit companies," said one industry insider. Just one of many MP3 stories dwelling in a Wired News special report.
Beating the bug: Wall Street expanded Y2K testing to some 400 firms. The simulations will run through 25 April, but early performance assessments were glowing.
You'reSued.com: Buy.com still hasn't extricated itself from the jam it got into more than a month ago when it offered computer monitors well below cost, then changed its mind. This week the e-retailer was hit with a class action suit by consumers complaining of a charge-first, ask-questions-later policy.
Apple's coup: The latest trailer for the upcoming Star Wars prequel hit the Web -- but only in QuickTime. Apple crowed.
Dark force: Also on the Star Wars front, Lucasfilm began cracking down on unauthorized commercial use of copyrights and trademarks. The company is even yanking licenses back from some of the artists and writers who've faithfully stoked the series' flame for years. Vader-like, fans cried.
On the Hill: A House subcommittee backed a bill that would relax export restrictions on encrypted software. Just one step in what figures to be a long, bumpy legislative road.
Junked: Internet service providers convinced a software company to pull a product that makes it easy to compile a huge list of valid email addresses. That's good. But what about the calls to make such spamming software illegal?
Going public: A former chief financial officer at iVillage accused the company of inflating revenues to lure investors. Not good pub for a company that's about to launch an IPO.
Drkoop.com, a health-care site fronted by former US Top Doc C. Everett Koop, filed to raise US$50 million in a public offering. Analysts weren't wowed -- understandably so, given that the site has brought in $43,000 against losses of $9 million since it launched last July.
Going postal: The US post office, battling irrelevancy in the digital era, stepped up its push to control the .us domain. Through a legal agreement with the University of Southern California, .us -- still a key, untapped part of the Internet -- is the last remaining public-domain area the government oversees.
Pollees beware: about that survey that could determine whether the United States pursues online privacy-protection laws. Turns out it's being financed by longtime opponents of such legislation.
Global yack: Some mobile-phone services cover several countries, but there's no network standard for worldwide service. Aiming to change that, technologists and regulators began hammering out specs for third-generation phones, called 3G by those in the know.
East meets West: The second Alley to the Valley conference in San Francisco wasn't only about grubbing for VC cash. There was lofty talk concerning the future of entrepreneurship on the Web, too.
Docudrama: Developers of eXtensible markup language met in San Jose, where it was noted that in the last year, more than 100 industries announced initiatives to establish XML tags.
Retro tech: The South African company that hit it big with the windup radio said it will make a generator to run laptop computers. Interested? Apple is.
Life of the party: A functioning chat room happens neither by magic nor accident. Deft, sensitive hosting is the key, advised the folks at Blue Barn who train these smooth operators.
Geek kids: There were brainy teens galore at the 1999 Science Talent Search, sponsored by Intel after 57 years under Westinghouse's stewardship. The brainiest of them all was 14-year-old Natalia Toro, who became the competition's youngest winner ever -- and picked up $50,000.
Bon voyage: Wired News original Steve Silberman bid us farewell this week and did so with an eloquence that will be missed. THE WEEK AHEAD
14 March: Want to tell the Net's new governing body what you think of their policies -- and be heard? Better hurry, then. Deadline to apply for membership on ICANN's Independent Review Advisory Board is midnight tonight.
15 and 16 March, Washington: One of tech's more formidable lobbying groups, the Information Technology Association of America, holds its fourth annual Policy Summit. Among the scheduled speakers: US Attorney General Janet Reno and David Beier, Al Gore's chief domestic-policy adviser.
12 to 21 March, Austin, Texas: It's March, it's Austin, it's South by SouthWest. The grandest indie fest of them all consists of three overlapping festivals -- first film, then interactive, then music.
16 March, Washington: US Y2K czar John Koskinen delivers a keynote address at FOSE, the annual federal IT extravaganza.
18 March: Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 5, for real.
19 March, Washington: The American Enterprise Institute holds a seminar on Internet taxes. The featured speaker will be University of Chicago Professor Austan Goolsbee, who says applying current taxes to Internet sales would reduce online revenues by at least 25 percent.
